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I can provide documents that will show that my father had full knowledge of the Compound V project and personally authorized payouts to the families of subjects—
"He's crazy, right? That's what this is, some kind of, fucking, breakdown or he's back on drugs or something?"
Shiv's eyes cut away briefly from where they'd been glued to the image of Kendall selling out their family on national television, to see Roman standing in the doorway. His hair had fallen out of place and he was a little out of breath, like he'd run up the two flights of stairs from his office the second Kendall went off-script (and how much must it eat at him, she thought, that her office was on a higher floor than his).
Shiv made a noncommittal noise and leaned closer to the screen. She knew what Kendall looked like coked-out, and this, well, she couldn't totally rule it out—he did look pretty sweaty—but it wasn't only drugs. This was a Kendall convinced of his own righteousness, and that had the potential to be very dangerous. "I think this is real," she said. "He's gonna try to take down the whole company. Why else would he have teamed up with Vicky?"
"Oh, you mean Congresswoman Neuman? And thanks for that, by the way," Roman said, coming to lean against the edge of her desk. "You couldn't have found a way to torpedo her career before you decided to jump ship and beg daddy dearest for a seat at the grown-ups' table?"
Shiv flipped him off over her shoulder, but watching Vicky try to hide her smug smile while Kendall enumerated their father's crimes, she privately had to concede that Roman had a point.
"God, what a shit show," she said, muting the TV as the press pool erupted with questions. "The collateral damage and payoffs we could spin; people don’t actually care about that shit. But the truth about Compound V? That 'supes aren't born, they're made' line? That's gonna be a problem."
It had been bound to leak at some point. Honestly, Shiv was a little surprised the company had managed to keep it a secret for this long. Although she had heard rumors about some of the more unorthodox approaches Vought-Royco took to enforcing NDAs, so maybe she shouldn’t have been.
Roman snorted. "All people will care about is how they can get a piece of it. I’ll bet they line up around the fucking block waiting to hand over their babies to get a dose and a fat check. The stock price will probably double."
Shiv glanced down at her phone: over a dozen missed calls and even more texts. She swiped open the most recent message from Tom (Are you seeing this? What’s our angle here? CALL ME) and then flipped her phone facedown on the desk.
Roman was still watching the muted press conference. Some baby-faced lawyer was at the microphone now answering questions, but Roman’s eyes were fixed on Kendall in the background. "Do you remember when you first found out?" he asked without looking over at her.
"Found out what?"
"That Dad could have made us special, and he chose not to."
For a moment, Shiv flashed back to herself at nine, playing in the hall outside her father’s office at the Summer Palace, snippets of conversation between him and Frank drifting through the cracked door. She had sat there listening, frozen in place and clutching her Queen Maeve doll, as a queasy, sinking feeling settled in the pit of her stomach, even if it would be years before she understood the full meaning of what she’d heard.
She shook off the memory, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Come on Rome, you've worked here longer than me. You've seen what Compound V does to people, you know it's a mixed bag. He was protecting us."
Roman laughed harshly. "Yeah, that sure sounds like him." He crossed over to her sofa and flopped down. "The only person he was protecting was himself. Pretty hard to keep your kids in line if they can snap your spine one-handed. You really think Kendall would have played the good little soldier for even half as long if he'd had powers?"
"Would you have?" Shiv asked, suddenly curious. She watched as Roman's expression turned dark, and she wondered if he was picturing it the same as her: all the times she’d seen him shaken and cowed after another altercation with their father, the way he never tried to fight back, only made himself smaller. Then his face twisted back into something sardonic and aloof, and the moment broke.
"Maybe he tested it on Connor and it didn't work. Or it did, but he just grew a dick on his back or something. I bet he’s still got a weird little nub of a clit from where it was surgically removed," Roman said. "Probably better we never got our chance."
"Yeah, the world really only needs one superpowered manchild with mommy issues and a personality disorder who can barely conceal his hard-on for fascism," Shiv shot back. Personally, she wasn’t sure the world even needed the one, but she sure as shit wouldn’t say that out loud within a five-mile radius of this building.
Roman targeted a kick towards her shin, but she dipped her knees to the side and his shoe thunked against the desk.
On the television, the press conference had ended and they had cut back to two talking heads and a graphic listing Supe-related fatalities in the past decade. "Do you—" Shiv started, cleared her throat and tried again, "Do you think Kendall might have a point? I mean, all the deaths, the coverups—it's a lot. Maybe there does need to be some kind of oversight."
"You sound like fucking Comrade Neuman up there,” Roman said, gesturing toward the screen. “We don't need the government forming some task force to play Big Brother and crawl up our assholes. Besides, it's just the small-time nobodies who fuck things up, and how much damage can they really do? Dad knows how to keep The Seven in check."
"Until this morning I would have said he knew how to keep Ken in check, too," Shiv pointed out. She wasn't sure what exactly she was arguing for. Kendall being on the outs could only mean good things for her standing in the company, so why wasn't she happier about this?
"All I know," Roman said, "is that if everything goes to shit, I'd rather be on the side of the literal superheroes instead of the non-powered fuckface calling for their heads."
His phone buzzed insistently and he pulled it out of his pocket and made a face. "Now if you'll excuse me, since my job title isn't purely decorative, I have to go help save our family business."
After the door shut behind him, Shiv sat down at her desk and turned up the sound on the television. She tuned out the pundits, staring at the picture of Kendall they had put in the corner of the screen.
That day when she was nine, she had run to Kendall’s room, frantic to tell him what she'd overheard. He hadn't seemed surprised, more resigned. "Not having powers isn't the same as being powerless," he said to her, the words coming out rehearsed, as if he had recited them to himself like a mantra. Even at the time, Shiv recognized it as a meaningless platitude, a comforting lie. That was the difference between them, she realized now: Kendall actually believed it.
Later, when his name popped up on her caller ID, she let it go to voicemail.